Chapter 11

_THE BORN CRIMINAL AND HIS RELATION TO MORAL INSANITY AND EPILEPSY_

No one, before my father, had ever recognised in the criminal an abnormal being driven by an irresistible atavistic impulse to commit anti-social acts, but many had observed (cases of the kind were too frequent to escape notice) the existence of certain individuals, nearly always members of degenerate families, who seemed from their earliest infancy to be prompted by some fatal impulse to do evil to their fellow-men. They differed from ordinary people, because they hated the very persons who to normal beings are the nearest and dearest, parents, husbands, wives, and children, and because their inhuman deeds seemed to cause them no remorse. These individuals, who were sometimes treated as lunatics, sometimes as diseased persons, and sometimes as criminals, were said by the earliest observers to be afflicted with moral insanity.

_Analogy._ Those who are familiar with all that Pinel, Morel, Richard Connon, and other great alienists have written on the morally insane cannot help remarking the analogy, nay identity, of the physical, intellectual, and moral characteristics of this type of lunatic and those of the born criminal.

The same physical anomalies already observed in criminals, as described in the first chapter (cranial deformities, asymmetry, physical and functional left-handedness, anomalies in the teeth, hands, and feet), are described by these older writers as being characteristic of the morally insane, as are also those mental and moral qualities already noted in the born criminal--vanity, want of affection, cruelty, idleness, and love of orgies.

Only the analogy of the origin and early manifestations was lacking to complete the proof of the identity of the two forms. It is true that moral insanity is more often found in the descendants of insane, neurotic, or dipsomaniac forebears than in those of criminals, and that the characteristics are manifested at an earlier age than is the case with born criminals, but these differences are not of fundamental importance.

_Cases._ During many years of observation, my father was able to follow innumerable cases of moral insanity in which perversity was manifested literally from the cradle, and in which the victims of this disease grew up into delinquents in no wise distinguishable from born criminals.

A typical instance is that of a certain Rizz... who was brought to him by the mother because, while still at the breast, he bit his nurse so viciously that bottle-feeding had to be substituted. At the age of two years, careful training and medical treatment notwithstanding, this child was separated from his brothers, because he stuck pins into their pillows and played dangerous tricks on them. Two years later, he broke open his father's cash-box and stole money to buy sweets; at six, although decidedly intelligent, he was expelled from every private school in the town, because he instigated the others to mischief or ill-treated them. At fourteen, he seduced a servant and ran away, and at twenty he killed his fiancée by throwing her out of a window. Thanks to the testimony of a great many doctors, Rizz... was declared to be morally insane, but if the family had been poor instead of well-to-do, and the mother had neglected to have her child examined in infancy by a medical man, thus obtaining ample proof of the pathological nature of his perversity, Rizz... would have been condemned as an ordinary criminal, because, like all morally insane persons, he was very intelligent and able to reason clearly, like a normal individual.

Another typical case is that of a child named Rav... (see Fig. 12) a native of the Romagna, who was brought to my father at the age of eight, because his parents were convinced that his conduct was due to a morbid condition. Unlike the above-mentioned case, his evil acts were always carried out in an underhand way. He showed great spite towards his brothers and sisters, especially the smaller ones, whom he attempted to strangle on several occasions, and was expelled from school on account of the bad influence he exercised over his schoolfellows. He delighted above everything in robbing his parents, employers, and the neighbours and in falsely accusing others, and so cleverly did he manage this that he caused a great deal of mischief before his double-dealing was discovered. When only eight, on leaving home early every morning to go to work, he would secretly throw all the milk left at the neighbours' doors into the dust-bin, then he accused the janitor of stealing it and got him dismissed. A year later, he nearly succeeded in causing the arrest of a pawnbroker, whom he accused of having lent him money on a cloak, it being illegal in Italy to accept anything in pawn from a minor. The cloak, however, was discovered by his mother hidden in the cellar. At ten years of age, he alleged that his father had brutally ill-treated him, and as severe marks and bruises on his body gave colour to the accusation, the poor man was arrested. The marks, however, were self-inflicted.

Another boy, a certain Man..., a peasant from the Val d'Aosta, an Alpine valley in Piedmont, where cretinism is indigenous, exhibited perverse tendencies from his earliest infancy. When twelve years old, he killed his companion in a squabble over an egg. (See Fig. 13.)

In the above-mentioned cases, the subjects all belonged to well-to-do or honest families and the pathological heredity was therefore exclusively nervous, not criminal. For this reason, the parents were struck by the abnormal depravity of their sons and had them medically examined and treated, thus discovering that they were morally insane. If, on the other hand, the parents had been criminals and had, themselves, set a bad example, nobody would have supposed that these depraved tendencies were innate in the children or had developed precociously. The fact of the prevalence of moral insanity in neurotic families (with frequent cases of lunacy, alcoholism, etc.) rather than in those of criminal tendencies appears at first sight strange, but according to the new theory advanced by my father, the criminal is a mentally diseased person; and we shall see in a later chapter that the heredity of insane, neurotic, and dipsomaniac parents is completely equivalent to a criminal heredity.

=FIG. 12 BOY MORALLY INSANE (see page 55)=

=FIG. 13 BOY MORALLY INSANE (see page 56)=

_Proofs of Analogy._ Thus the genesis and early manifestations, which might have been diverse, really constitute a counter-proof. Careful anamnesis shows that both born criminals and the morally insane begin at a very early age to exhibit symptoms of the morbid tendencies which make them such a danger to society, and if the general public and the police, when such cases are brought to their notice, usually fail to realise that they arise from precocious perversity, it is because atrocious actions are excused on the ground of extreme youth and attributed to this cause rather than to vicious propensities. In many cases, indeed, they are revealed only to the physician.

A counter-proof is likewise furnished by investigations of the origin of these pathological cases, since the study of born criminals shows that they, as well as the morally insane, are as frequently the offspring of insane, epileptic, neurotic, and drunken parents as of criminals, but in the latter case, the morbid origin of their perversity is seldom brought to light owing to the criminality of the parents, who naturally view with indifference symptoms of vice in their children.

EPILEPTICS, AND THEIR RELATION TO BORN CRIMINALS AND THE MORALLY INSANE

We have already stated that the physical and psychic characteristics of born criminals coincide with those of the morally insane. Both are identical with those of another class of degenerates, known to the world as epileptics.

The term epilepsy was applied to a malady frequently studied but little understood by the ancient medical world, the chief symptoms of which were repeated tonic and clonic fits, preceded by the so-called "epileptic aura" and followed by a deep sleep. It was called _morbus sacer_ and believed to be of divine origin.

Careful examination of epileptics by clinical and mental experts, showed that in addition to the characteristic seizure, these unfortunate beings were subject to other phenomena, which sometimes took the place of the convulsive fit and in other cases preceded or followed it. These were _pavor nocturnus_, sudden sweats, heat, neuralgia, sialorrhea, periodical cephalalgia and, above all, vertigo; and these symptoms were not always accompanied by unconsciousness nor followed by coma. Sometimes the seizure was only manifested by paroxysms of rage or ferocious and brutal impulses (devouring animals alive), which, if consciously committed, would be considered criminal. This fact led doctors and mental experts to examine other patients, and they were able to advance positive proof that a certain number of epileptics never experience the typical seizure, the disease being manifested in this milder form with cephalalgia, sialorrhea, delirious ferocity, and above all, giddiness.

The multiformity of epilepsy has been fully confirmed by the experiments of Luciani, Zehen, and others, who produced various forms of epilepsy by submitting different cerebral zones to varying degrees of irritation. By graduating the electric current, Rosenbach was able to provoke the whole series of epileptic phenomena described above, from the mildest to the most serious manifestations. A slight irritation of the motor areas gave rise to tetanic contractions and clonic convulsions in a given joint; an increase in the strength of the current produced more violent movements which spread over the whole limb, and by intensifying the current still further, to half the body. Finally, on the application of a very strong current, the typical fit was produced with clonic spasms in all the body, unconsciousness, nystagmus, and rigidity of the pupils.

By irritating the frontal lobes of dogs, Richet and Bernard produced vertigo and certain physical phenomena (snuffing, barking, and biting).

Taking these investigations as a basis, Jackson came to the conclusion that epileptic fits are due to a rapid and excessive explosion of the grey matter, which, instead of developing its force gradually, develops it all of a sudden because it is irritated. And as it has been shown conclusively that the disease can be manifested in such varied forms--vertigo, twitching of the muscles, sialorrhea, cephalalgia, fits of rage, and ferocious actions--which appear to be the equivalent of the typical seizure, individuals subject to these forms of neurosis should be classed as epileptics, even if they never experience the typical motor attack.

It is in this category, which may be called attenuated epilepsy, that we should place criminals, who in addition to the psychic and physical characteristics of the epileptic, possess others peculiar to themselves. Physical anomalies (plagiocephaly, microcephaly, macrocephaly, strabismus, facial and cranial asymmetry, prominent frontal sinuses, median occipital fossa, receding forehead, projecting ears, progeneismus, and badly shaped teeth) are characteristic both of criminals and epileptics, as was demonstrated in certain epileptics treated by my father (Figs. 14 and 15), and the same holds good of functional and histological anomalies. The histological anomaly discovered by Roncoroni in the frontal lobe of born criminals, consisting of the atrophy of the deep granular layer, the inversion of the pyramidal layers and small cells with enlargement and rarefaction of the pyramidal cells, and the existence of nervous cells in the white substance, is found in about the same proportion in cases of non-criminal epileptics. We find also in the same proportion in the field of vision of epileptics, as of born criminals, the anomaly discovered by Ottolenghi, consisting of peripheral scotoma intersecting the nearly uniform line of varying size common to normal eyes.

=FIG. 14 AN EPILEPTIC BOY (see page 60)=

_Psychological Characteristics._ The complete identity of epileptics, born criminals and the morally insane becomes evident as soon as we study their psychology.

Epilepsy, congenital criminality, and moral insanity alone are capable of comprising in one clinical form intellectual divergencies which range from genius to imbecility. In epileptics, this divergence is sometimes manifested in one and the same person in the space of twenty-four hours. An individual at one time afflicted with loss of will-power and amnesia, and incapable of formulating the simplest notion, will shortly afterwards give expression to original ideas and reason logically.

Contradictions and exaggerations of sentiment are salient characteristics of epileptics as of born criminals and the morally insane. Quarrelsome, suspicious, and cynical individuals suddenly become gentle, respectful, and affectionate. The cynic expresses religious sentiments, and the man who has brutally ill-treated his first wife, kneels before the second. An epileptic observed by Tonnini fancied himself at times to be Napoleon; at others, he would lick the ground like the humblest slave.

The extreme excitability manifested by born criminals is shared by epileptics. Distrustful, intolerant, and incapable of sincere attachment, a gesture or a look is sufficient to infuriate them and incite them to the most atrocious deeds.

Epilepsy has a disastrous effect on the character. It destroys the moral sense, causes irritability, alters the sensations through constant hallucinations and delusions, deadens the natural feelings or leads them into morbid channels.

_Affection for Animals._ The hatred frequently manifested by criminals and epileptics towards the members of their own families is in many cases accompanied by an extraordinary fondness for animals as is shown by the cases of Caligula, Commodus, Lacenaire, Rosas, Dr. Francia, and La Sola,--who preferred kittens to her own children. A morally insane individual known to my father would spend months in training dogs, horses, birds, geese, and other fowls. He was wont to remark that all animals were friendly to him as though they recognised in him one of their own kind. Dostoyevsky's fellow-convicts showed great fondness for a horse, an eagle, and a number of geese. They were so attached to a goat that they wanted to gild its horns.

=FIG. 15 FERNANDO Epileptic (see page 60)=

_Somnambulism._ This is a frequent characteristic of epileptics. Krafft-Ebing says:

"The seizure is often followed by a condition approaching somnambulism. The patient appears to have recovered consciousness, talks coherently, behaves in an orderly manner, and resumes his ordinary occupations. Yet he is not really conscious as is shown by the fact that, later he is entirely ignorant of what he has been doing during this stage. This peculiar state of mental daze may last a long time, sometimes during the whole interval between two seizures."

Many of the criminals observed by Dostoyevsky were given to gesticulating and talking agitatedly in their sleep.

Obscenity is a common characteristic. Kowalewsky (_Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1885) notes the resemblance between the reproductive act and the epileptic seizure, the tonic tension of the muscles, loss of consciousness and mydriasis in both cases, and remarks also on the frequency with which epileptic attacks are accompanied by sexual propensities.

The desire for sexual indulgence, like the taste for alcohol, is distinguished by the precocity peculiar to criminals and the morally insane. Precocious sexual instincts have been observed in children of four years, and in one case obscenity was manifested by an infant of one year.

Marro (_Annali di Freniatria_, 1890) describes a child of three years and ten months, who had exhibited signs of epilepsy from birth and was of a jealous, irascible disposition. He was in the habit of scratching and biting his brothers and sisters, knocking over the furniture, hiding things, and tearing his clothes, and when unable to hurt or annoy others, would vent his rage upon himself. If punished, he would continue his misdeeds in an underhand way.

Another child had been afflicted with convulsions from his earliest infancy, in consequence of which his character deteriorated, and while still a mere infant, he behaved with the utmost violence. He killed a cat, attempted to strangle his brother, and to set fire to the house.

Invulnerability, another characteristic common to criminals, has been observed by Tonnini in epileptics, whose wounds and injuries heal with astonishing rapidity, and he is inclined to regard this peculiarity in the light of a reversion to a stage of evolution, at which animals like lizards and salamanders were able to replace severed joints by new growths. This invulnerability is shared by all degenerates: epileptics, imbeciles, and the morally insane.

"One of these latter," says Tonnini, "tore out his moustache bodily and with it a large piece of skin. In a few days the wound was nearly healed."

Very characteristic is the almost automatic tendency to destroy animate and inanimate objects, which results in frequent wounding, suicides, and homicides. This desire to destroy is also common to children. Fernando P. (Fig. 15), an epileptic treated by my father, when enraged was in the habit of smashing all the furniture within his reach and throwing the pieces over a wall some twenty-five feet high.

Misdea, a regimental barber, to whom we shall refer later, roused to fury by dismissal from his post, broke four razors into small pieces with his teeth. Another epileptic, Piz... used to break all the crockery in his cell regularly every other day, "just to give vent to his feelings."

This tendency to destroy everything in the cell is common also to ordinary criminals.

_Cases of Moral Insanity with Latent Epileptic Phenomena._ The following cases, which were treated by my father and which were subject to careful observation and study, will serve to give a clear idea of the criminal form of epilepsy.

Subject: Giuliano Celestino, age 16. Yellow skin abundantly tattooed, absence of hair on face or body. Cranium: plagiocephaly on the left frontal and right parietal regions, obliquely-placed eyes, narrow forehead, prominent orbital arches, line of the mouth horizontal as in apes, lateral incisors of upper jaw resembling the canines with rugged margins, excessive zygomatic and maxillary development, tactile sensibility very obtuse, dolorific sensibility non-existent on the right, very obtuse on the left, rotular reflex action exaggerated on the right, very feeble on the left. Devoid of natural feeling. When asked if he was fond of his mother, he replied: "When she brings me cigars and money." When questioned concerning his crimes he showed neither shame nor confusion. On the contrary, he confessed with a smile that when only ten he had tried to kill his youngest brother, who was then an infant in the cradle, and when hindered by his mother, had struck and bitten her. His father was a drunkard afflicted with syphilis, and Giuliano had suffered from epilepsy from the age of seven. At this age he began to indulge in alcohol and self-abuse, and stole from his parents in order to buy sweets. He appears to have been subject to an ambulatory mania, which caused him to wander aimlessly about the country, and if kept within doors he would let himself down from the windows, climb up the chimney, or, failing in these attempts to escape, would break the furniture and attract the attention of the neighbours by his terrific yells. From the age of eight, despite his parents' efforts to apprentice him, he was always immediately dismissed by his employers. He ran away with a strolling company of acrobats, and later apprenticed himself to a butcher in order to revel in the horrors of the slaughter-house. At fifteen he was confined in a reformatory, where he twice attempted to escape and to set fire to the building, and was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. For the space of a few days, he appears to have suffered from epileptic attacks, although in a masked form, accompanied by various attempts at suicide. These were renewed every other month for a whole year. When asked what he would do for a living when released, he would reply laughingly that there was plenty of money in other people's pockets.

L... a morally insane subject, age 16, native of Turin, the son of an aged, but extremely respectable man. Height 1.50 m., weight, 46.2 kg., with abundant hair, and down on the forehead, incisors crowded together, excessive development of the canines, and exaggerated orbital angle of the frontal bone. He was entirely devoid of affection for his family, remarking cynically that he was fond of his father when he gave him money and did not worry him. Sometimes he kicked the poor old man and otherwise abused him. When unable to obtain money, he would smash all the furniture in the house, until, for the sake of economy, his family gave him what he wanted. In order to get a five-pound note from money-lenders he would sign promissory notes for ten times that amount. He changed his ideas from one hour to another. Sometimes he wanted to enter the army, at others to emigrate to France, etc. When only fourteen he frequented houses of ill-fame, where he played the bully.

Although this case may be regarded as a typical instance of moral insanity, there were apparently no symptoms of vertigo or convulsions. At the age of sixteen, however, while suffering from rheumatism, this subject tried to throw himself from the balcony of his bedroom at the same hour three nights running. After this he seems to have suffered from amnesia.

These frenzied attempts at self-destruction, which seem to have taken the place of the epileptic seizure, were related to my father casually by the boy's mother; but in other cases, similar incidents, although of the utmost importance to the criminologist, often pass unnoticed.

In the _Actes du Congrès d'Anthropologie_, Angelucci describes another typical case of epileptic moral insanity. E. G. (brother a criminal epileptic, father a sufferer from cancer) was sentenced several times for assaulting people often without motive. Tattooed with the figure of a naked woman, microcephalous (39.2 cubic inches = 589 c.c.), having cranial and facial asymmetry, he was vain, deceitful, and violent, and made great show of scepticism although he wore a great many medals of the Virgin. This subject was over twenty-five when the first epileptic seizure took place.

The connection between epilepsy and crime is one of derivation rather than identity. Epilepsy represents the genus of which criminality and moral insanity are the species.

The born criminal is an epileptic, inasmuch as he possesses the anatomical, skeletal, physiognomical, psychological, and moral characteristics peculiar to the recognised form of epilepsy, and sometimes also its motorial phenomena, although at rare intervals. More frequently he exhibits its substitutes (vertigo, twitching, sialorrhea, emotional attacks). But the criminal epileptic possesses other characteristics peculiar to himself; in particular, that desire of evil for its own sake, which is unknown to ordinary epileptics. In view of this fact this form of epilepsy must be considered apart from the purely nervous anomaly, both in the clinical diagnosis and the methods of cure and social prophylaxis.

Moreover, the nervous anomaly, which in the case of criminals appears on the scene from time to time, accentuating the criminal tendency till it reaches the atavistic form and producing morbid complications which sometimes prove fatal, serves to point out the true nature of the disease and to emphasise the fact that while it is attenuated so far as motor attacks are concerned, it is aggravated on the other hand by criminal impulses, which render the patient semi-immune and permit him a longer and less troubled existence, but provoke a constant brain irritation, which clouds and disturbs his intellectual and moral nature.

In order better to understand these two forms of epilepsy, we must recall two analogous forms of another and equally multiform disease, tuberculosis in its forms of quick consumption and scrofula. The etiology is identical and the symptoms frequently alike, but while the latter proceeds very slowly and allows the patient a long life, the former is rapid and severs life in its prime.

In motory epilepsy, the irritation is manifested on a sudden, but leaves the mind healthy in the interval, although the attacks may lead to rapid dementia. In criminal epilepsy this irritation does not break out in violent seizures and is compatible with a long life, but it changes the whole physical and psychic complexion of the individual.

The epileptic origin of criminality explains many characteristics of the criminal, the genesis of which was previously obscure. Many of the moral and physical peculiarities of born criminals and the morally insane may be classed as professional characteristics acquired through the habit of evil-doing, especially the naso-labial and zygomatic wrinkles, cynical expression, tapering fingers, etc. Many anomalies also in the bones, hair, ears, eyes, and the monstrous development of the jaws and teeth, must be explained by arrested development in the fifth or sixth month of ultra-uterine existence, corresponding to the characteristics of inferior races by the usual law of ontogeny which recapitulates phylogeny. But there is a final series of anomalies, the origin of which was formerly wrapped in mystery: plagiocephaly, sclerosis, the thickening of the meninges, cranial asymmetry, and other changes in the cerebral layers, which can be explained only by a disease altering precociously the whole cerebral conformation, as is exactly the case in epilepsy.

The born criminal is an epileptic, not however afflicted with the common form of this disease, but with a special kind. The pathological basis, the etiology, and the anatomical and psychological characteristics are identical, but there are many differences. While in the ordinary form motor anomalies are very common, in the criminal form they are very rare, while in ordinary epilepsy the mental explosions are accompanied by unconsciousness, in the other form they are weakened and spread over the whole existence, and consciousness is, relatively speaking, preserved; and while, finally, the ordinary epileptic has not always the tendency to do evil for its own sake--nay, may even achieve holiness--in the hidden form the bent towards evil endures from birth to death. The perversity concentrated in one second in the motor attack, is attenuated in the second form, but spread over the whole existence. We have therefore an epilepsy _sui generis_, a variety of epilepsy which may be called criminal.

Thus the primitive idea of crime has become organic and complete. The criminal is only a diseased person, an epileptic, in whom the cerebral malady, begun in some cases during prenatal existence, or later, in consequence of some infection or cerebral poisoning, produces, together with certain signs of physical degeneration in the skull, face, teeth, and brain, a return to the early brutal egotism natural to primitive races, which manifests itself in homicide, theft, and other crimes.